"I'm a Linux cretin" -> accepted the apology ;o)
"Does Raspian comes with a C compiler" -> yes
"Does it use a command line interface" -> if you want it that way. You can connect it to a HDTV and use a desktop interface. You can connect it to network and start a remote desktop. You can connect it to network and use ssh ....
"Is it based on gcc?" -> The interface? ;o) yes, the compiler is gcc
"Does every Linux distro come with C" -> Very likely. All currently existing official raspberry images have gcc on board as far as I know, cause the RasPi is meant as a platform to learn programming.
"Can the compiler be used while stdio is directed through the UART" -> Why shouldn't it be usable? The compiler doesn't even need a command line interface. Or do you talk about a source code editor here? There are a lot of editors (and other programs) that work in terminal-mode and they don't need a desktop.
"Can the compiler be used while stdio is directed through the UART"
To be clear, the on board UART of the Raspi comes out on the GPIO header. By default the Raspian (Debian ARM tweaked for hardware floating point support) distribution uses that port as the kernel console and also runs a terminal session on it when all is booted up. You can log into it and use any normal command line programs. So if you connect to that UART using a nice terminal program from your PC you can probably use a text screen based IDE for software development.
I have successfully used a Prop Plug to connect from PC to Raspi UART.
However my plan is to use that UART to talk with a Propeller add on board. All new Prop devtools run on the Pi so it becomes a workstation and a PC is no longer required.
Cluso,
Yes, just grab the Raspian "wheezy" image and put it on an SD card, I'd suggest 8GB card. I guess you have found the instructions for doing that under Windows, I have no idea about that.
Best to have a USB keyboard, and a TV initially I think. You will need it to run SimpleIDE anyway. When it starts up there will be a text based question and answer session to set language and stuff like that, Importantly it asks if you would like to resize the file system to fill the entire card. If you say yes it will do the resize on the next reboot.
Download the SimpleIDE pacakage and follow the normal installations for SimpleIDE.
After that typing startx from the command line will get you a graphical session and you can run SimpleIDE.
Of the top of my head I think I selected GPIO 17 for the reset signal, what a memory, anyway if you select the /dev/ttyAMA0 serial port device in Simple IDE and try to download something it will tell you what GPIO it is trying to use for reset in the status progress messages window.
To be honest I have yet to actually use this for Programming a Prop, shame on me, but at least one person has reported that it works. No transistor circuit should be required. The reset pin is an input and lets the Props reset float high. When it wants to apply reset the pin is made driven low and set to output for a while, then it is set back to input. I can't see why that should not work with a direct pin to pin connection.
It will be great to have some more feedback on how all this works. Meanwhile Ihave to kick off another 20 hour Raspi buid to get the latest CMM compiler in there. Might be ready on Monday.
... Does Raspian come with a C compiler? Does it use a command line interface? Is it based on gcc? Does every Linux distro come with C? Can the compiler be used while stdio is directed through the UART?
Here is my set up, I use it in a "headless" manner. On my Win 7 computer I have PuTTY installed which I use to connect to the Raspberry Pi, in a command line situation. So far, using PuTTY, I use NANO as an editor for my files, and G++ as the the compiler for my C++ test run. Yes, it has C, I just have not used it yet.
Now that PropGCC has Tiny lib which contains cout/cin, I plan to have SimpleIDE open on the right hand side of my screen, and PuTTY on the left hand side of my screen. The scenario is, I create a C++ file for the Propeller, and then I recreate it on the Raspberry Pi side, just to see at what point, in real life, the C code transportability aspect starts to break down, in a serious fashion. Hope this helps.
I also use the RasPi headless . RasPi is connected to the LAN and I use either PuTTY SSH terminal session. I also tried an X server on my Win 7 netbook to have the desktop of the RasPi there. Worked!
The propeller (QuickStart) I attached to the USB of the RasPi and it works. Upload programs is no problem. Reconnecting with a Linux terminal program is also no problem.
The problem I have is, that after a while of sending data via USB, the network is broken. And with fast bautrates there are transmission errors. I hope this is solved once I switch to wheezy.
Well, I just had a major system crash on my headless Raspberry Pi. I logged in a couple of days ago, it was working fine, today, can not log in, has corrupted file system, so a shutdown, by pulling the plug, is not able to reboot. Hmm, I hope this is not something that will be occurring on a consistent basis.
We're running headless using Xming to ssh in, it allows a conventient way to open addition terminal windows on the PC desktop. That rig is just fro running props. Its kind of nice to have the rig down in the lab and be able to ssh in and work from any where in the house, or any where in town. The RPi seems too slow to use as PC desktop when I have my kicking gaming rig and fancy laptop already; running in a terminal window from a regular PC makes things faster.
I'm going to get a separate RPi to hang off the HDMI TV and try that as a HTPC. The kids want to reserve the big TV for cartoons anyway.
The problem I have is, that after a while of sending data via USB, the network is broken. And with fast bautrates there are transmission errors. I hope this is solved once I switch to wheezy.
It is certainly possible it is a software problem, but it is also known that low voltage can also cause the ethernet & USB to drop out (depending also on system load, and temperature). So it doesn't hurt to confirm your TP1-TP2 voltage is very close to 5.0V. http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Troubleshooting_power_problems
The RPi has a lot of options to be used headless, I've used all of the following, which great success :-
- PuTTY SSH
- serial terminal connected via MAX3232 circuit or PropPlug
- VNC using tightVNC on the RPi
I also use a cheapo HDMI to VGA adapter (~£10 from ebay) and use any spare VGA monitor
PuTTY+Xming, the Xming allow multiple windows on the WXP PC
Sal is setting up direct connect between Prop and RPi GPIO using Go channels. Very fast I hear.
I'm also using VNC, but its pretty slow. I haven't figured out how to get it faster.
prof: yes, completely readable, but these was some jitter on it. I was having overscan problems until I set it onto 4:3 mode IIRC. The prop gives a much better display using the default resistor circuit
My TV is an HDTV with CRT screen - v.expensive 12 years ago, so I dont have HDMI. I could also barely read it on a 3.5" reversing car monitor.
I have an LCD computer monitor with VGA & DVI sockets. I have ordered a DVI to HDMI adapter and HDMI cable to see if this works. I did not try using connecting a prop via usb/ft232rl as a tty device.
I will not be able to get back to this for at least 2 weeks
The Raspi Prop Plate, as described in a previous post has been completed, as shown in the attached images. The first image shows a view of the setup, where the plate is placed on top of an Adafruit enclosure which contains the Raspi. The second image is a view of the populated board. The empty socket is for an RTC. Shorting headers will be used to connect Raspi pins to the corresponding propeller pins. The six pin header on the right side will be used to connect the Raspi to either the prop plug connector or prop pins 31 &30. Both the prop & Raspi are powered from a 5V 2.5 amp switching power supply connected to the "plate".
I see the Raspberry Pi has just bumped to 512MB as standard
This doubles the RAM from the launch configuration of the low cost embedded computer platform and the additional memory will allow the Raspberry Pi to run a future version of an Android 4.0 operating system.
Tony - sorry to be dense but I can't seem to find your PCB on BatchPCB. Do you have a link to the specific entry? Thanks. I'm very interested in making the prop and the raspberry PI work together.
NickL - would you consider submitting a brief writeup to The MagPi? (http://www.themagpi.com/) The November issue discussed interfacing to the Arduino.
Tony - sorry to be dense but I can't seem to find your PCB on BatchPCB. Do you have a link to the specific entry? Thanks. I'm very interested in making the prop and the raspberry PI work together.
Another combo to have a look at : Propeller + eBox3350.
Just now , i am trying to use the Propeller (for I/O) and an ebox3350 (about 100 $ and 270 g, 3 USB, VGA,
for image analysis) : loaded XP on this mini PC so as to use Roborealm .
I went to BatchPCB to see about the PCB boards and they have closed up and OSH Park has taken over. Has the account for the PCB been switched over to OSH Park?
Sort of. You have to set up a new account. I've only gotten one set (3) boards from them so far, but I was impressed with the service. I had a small sensor board made that was probably about 1.5" square. The 3 boards cost $7.62 TOTAL. With BatchPCB, you started with a $10 setup fee. And I got the boards in about 2 weeks. The boards had a little residue of the tab which was holding them in the panel, but it was easily removed. And the boards look really sharp with that purple photomask and gold contacts. Try it, I think you'll like it.
Comments
"Does Raspian comes with a C compiler" -> yes
"Does it use a command line interface" -> if you want it that way. You can connect it to a HDTV and use a desktop interface. You can connect it to network and start a remote desktop. You can connect it to network and use ssh ....
"Is it based on gcc?" -> The interface? ;o) yes, the compiler is gcc
"Does every Linux distro come with C" -> Very likely. All currently existing official raspberry images have gcc on board as far as I know, cause the RasPi is meant as a platform to learn programming.
"Can the compiler be used while stdio is directed through the UART" -> Why shouldn't it be usable? The compiler doesn't even need a command line interface. Or do you talk about a source code editor here? There are a lot of editors (and other programs) that work in terminal-mode and they don't need a desktop.
To be clear, the on board UART of the Raspi comes out on the GPIO header. By default the Raspian (Debian ARM tweaked for hardware floating point support) distribution uses that port as the kernel console and also runs a terminal session on it when all is booted up. You can log into it and use any normal command line programs. So if you connect to that UART using a nice terminal program from your PC you can probably use a text screen based IDE for software development.
I have successfully used a Prop Plug to connect from PC to Raspi UART.
However my plan is to use that UART to talk with a Propeller add on board. All new Prop devtools run on the Pi so it becomes a workstation and a PC is no longer required.
Some quick questions to get my R-Pi running so I can use it to download a program to my propeller. This is what I think I need to do...
1. Download the Raspian "wheezy" SD image & create SD card http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
So far I have not found what the R-Pi expects for the terminal when it powers up - a USB keyboard & TV or do I need a pc connected as a terminal?
2. Download your compiled code for jazzed SimpleIDE
Which GPIO pin do you use for the reset to the prop? Presume the transistor reset cct is required?
Yes, just grab the Raspian "wheezy" image and put it on an SD card, I'd suggest 8GB card. I guess you have found the instructions for doing that under Windows, I have no idea about that.
Best to have a USB keyboard, and a TV initially I think. You will need it to run SimpleIDE anyway. When it starts up there will be a text based question and answer session to set language and stuff like that, Importantly it asks if you would like to resize the file system to fill the entire card. If you say yes it will do the resize on the next reboot.
Download the SimpleIDE pacakage and follow the normal installations for SimpleIDE.
After that typing startx from the command line will get you a graphical session and you can run SimpleIDE.
Of the top of my head I think I selected GPIO 17 for the reset signal, what a memory, anyway if you select the /dev/ttyAMA0 serial port device in Simple IDE and try to download something it will tell you what GPIO it is trying to use for reset in the status progress messages window.
To be honest I have yet to actually use this for Programming a Prop, shame on me, but at least one person has reported that it works. No transistor circuit should be required. The reset pin is an input and lets the Props reset float high. When it wants to apply reset the pin is made driven low and set to output for a while, then it is set back to input. I can't see why that should not work with a direct pin to pin connection.
It will be great to have some more feedback on how all this works. Meanwhile Ihave to kick off another 20 hour Raspi buid to get the latest CMM compiler in there. Might be ready on Monday.
Now that PropGCC has Tiny lib which contains cout/cin, I plan to have SimpleIDE open on the right hand side of my screen, and PuTTY on the left hand side of my screen. The scenario is, I create a C++ file for the Propeller, and then I recreate it on the Raspberry Pi side, just to see at what point, in real life, the C code transportability aspect starts to break down, in a serious fashion. Hope this helps.
Ray
The propeller (QuickStart) I attached to the USB of the RasPi and it works. Upload programs is no problem. Reconnecting with a Linux terminal program is also no problem.
The problem I have is, that after a while of sending data via USB, the network is broken. And with fast bautrates there are transmission errors. I hope this is solved once I switch to wheezy.
This is sounding great! I'll be interested to see if wheezy solves the transmission errors.
Ray
I'm going to get a separate RPi to hang off the HDMI TV and try that as a HTPC. The kids want to reserve the big TV for cartoons anyway.
Which firmware and kernel are you using? There have been many fixes to the R-Pi USB driver in the past few months, and some bugs still remain. See for example
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7866&start=100#p168579
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=16500&p=166969&hilit=gpio+internet#p166969
It is certainly possible it is a software problem, but it is also known that low voltage can also cause the ethernet & USB to drop out (depending also on system load, and temperature). So it doesn't hurt to confirm your TP1-TP2 voltage is very close to 5.0V. http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Troubleshooting_power_problems
- PuTTY SSH
- serial terminal connected via MAX3232 circuit or PropPlug
- VNC using tightVNC on the RPi
I also use a cheapo HDMI to VGA adapter (~£10 from ebay) and use any spare VGA monitor
PuTTY+Xming, the Xming allow multiple windows on the WXP PC
Sal is setting up direct connect between Prop and RPi GPIO using Go channels. Very fast I hear.
I'm also using VNC, but its pretty slow. I haven't figured out how to get it faster.
I used a TV and composite video connection, and a USB keyboard. Booted fine and I could run the GUI using startx. Nothing else done at this time.
Could you read the text? I might just have a crappy standard def TV, but I couldn't read anything until it was on HDMI
My TV is an HDTV with CRT screen - v.expensive 12 years ago, so I dont have HDMI. I could also barely read it on a 3.5" reversing car monitor.
I have an LCD computer monitor with VGA & DVI sockets. I have ordered a DVI to HDMI adapter and HDMI cable to see if this works. I did not try using connecting a prop via usb/ft232rl as a tty device.
I will not be able to get back to this for at least 2 weeks
Now to try some of the software....
NickL
Sweet. How much for PCBs?
The board is available from the BatchPCB marketplace for $17.50.
NickL
This doubles the RAM from the launch configuration of the low cost embedded computer platform and the additional memory will allow the Raspberry Pi to run a future version of an Android 4.0 operating system.
Google: site:batchpcb.com propeller --> https://batchpcb.com/pcbs/93839
Is there a parts list for the Raspi Prop Plate board?
thanks!
Dave
Just now , i am trying to use the Propeller (for I/O) and an ebox3350 (about 100 $ and 270 g, 3 USB, VGA,
for image analysis) : loaded XP on this mini PC so as to use Roborealm .
For the EBox see:
http://robosavvy.com/store/product_i...oducts_id/1704
There are exemples of robots using : Arduino + eBox3350 :
http://simplycomputing.com.au/robots/ebox-project1
Jean Paul
Sent you a PM.
Mickster